The Greatest Trading Post in the World

In the cross of Christ, we find the greatest trading post in the world. There, our filthy robes of self-righteousness were traded for Christ’s robe of perfect righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). Our guilt was traded for grace and mercy, and our condemnation was traded for our justification. This is not make-believe or some kind of legal fiction. This is reality (Hebrews 9:22; 1 Peter 2:24).

As believers, all of Christ’s righteousness is credited to us. Did you catch that? ALL of Christ’s righteousness is reckoned to us. In the gospel, we are not given a righteousness that looks like Christ’s or one that is similar to Christ’s, we are given Christ’s very own righteousness. All of His perfection, in all its completeness, is now reckoned as being ours. This is no empty theory; this is gospel. Live in it and enjoy it. At the cross, Christ Jesus took legal liability for us and gave us the gift of His righteousness. This is such good and powerful news that, if this gospel were continually preached and believed in our churches, then believers would be transformed and delivered from lives that so often entangle and entrap them.

There are many whom I’ve met who, in their flesh, are striving after their own brand of holiness. They fail to realize that the all-holy God requires perfection. These folk, neither understand true holiness nor the true nature of sin. They, therefore, go about trying to meet what they suppose to be God’s standard. To them Christianity is about keeping the rules and trying to impress God and man. Failing to grasp the gospel fact that Christ has already reached God’s standard on our behalf, these folks are doomed to live lives of misery and failure. The only way they can live a so called perfect life is to either lower the standard of perfection or to excuse sin as not being sin at all! As a result, they lie to themselves about having reached a higher state than the rest of us. Some of them are so deceived that they believe they can actually live throughout the day without sin. They know nothing of the ‘Gospel Trading Post’.

As believers, we must have a good understanding of the Trading Post of the cross. There we encounter the righteousness of God in Christ. Everything that God requires of us is met in Christ; it is supplied in Christ and is fulfilled in Christ. God demands perfection, and the believer has that in Christ. God demands full and total obedience, and we have that in Christ.

This is a snapshot of the ‘Trading Post’ and the perfection with which we, as believers, are now clothed. The Lord Himself is our righteousness and He says to us, “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee” (Song of Songs 4:7). As we believe this, we enter into rest.